George W. Bush In His Bathroom: A Retrospective by A.G. Price

In 2013 photographs of two self-portraitspainted by former President George W. Bush,one showing him naked from the waist upstanding in his shower, the other soakingin the bathtub with the water running,were stolen from his sister’s email accountand posted on the internet.Below, an art critic wades in:

Yes, their provenance is problematic, illegitimate even,but the sheer, dare I say it, shock and awe of these twovisionary works by the artist known only to the world as Wcompels us in the rarefied thin air of high art to finally,gratefully pay homage to a muscular primitivismthat seeks to wall-slam our ossified notions of artistic talent,technical skill, as well as good taste into a stateof medically supervised unconsciousness.

To my fellow art critics nearly drowning themselvesin tortured psychoanalytical twaddleabout deep seated desires for cleansingor metaphorical conversations with waterboarders,I say your contributions to the field of art criticism are unacceptable.It’s not that a self-portrait of the artist standing nude (easy on those flesh tones sir)in his own shower contemplating his expressionless facereflected in a shaving mirror, or the other soaking his child-like bow legsin the bathtub are awkwardly weird, it’s that they’re so weirdly awkward.

To the haters who have despised and dismissed W’s creative legacybecause “his hands were stained with blood,” I say: Caravaggiowas a murderous psychopath who literally did have blood on his handsand you still showed up to his art shows, hypocrites.We’re talking regime change folks!Antiquated are the tobacco-colored horses and teepees of U.S. Grant.Passé is the drunken Cézanne wannabe post-impressionistic drivelChurchill excreted ad nauseam.Out of season are Ike’s Hallmark Christmas card “daubs.”This is edgy outsider art that thumbs its nose at elitist cultural fascism.This is art in all its misunderestimated queasiness.This is George W. Bush In His Bathroom: A Retrospective.